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Ideal customer profile (ICP)

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a short description of the companies your product fits best: their industry, size, region, the tools they run and what is changing for them. It decides who goes on a prospect list and who is left off.

Updated October 2026 · 4 min read · GetSales team

What goes into an ICP

An ICP describes accounts. You write it from the companies that already bought from you and got value, and it names what they had in common before they bought.

  • Industry. Named as narrowly as you can. NAICS, the system the US, Canada and Mexico developed to classify business locations by their economic activity, gives each industry a code, a sharper label than a word like "tech".1
  • Size. A headcount band or a revenue band, such as 20 to 200 staff.
  • Region. Where the companies are, and where you can sell, support and invoice.
  • Tools. The software they run that makes your product fit, or makes it pointless.
  • Timing. A visible change in the months before a purchase: a new sales leader, a funding round, a hiring push.
  • Exclusions. Who never goes on the list: customers, open deals, competitors and anyone who asked not to hear from you.

ICP and buyer persona

A buyer persona describes a person inside the account: the role that owns the problem, their seniority and what they are measured on. One ICP can hold several personas, such as the person who signs and the person who uses the product every day. In outbound the two are written together, because a list needs the right company and the right person in it.

Titles differ from company to company, so describe the persona by the problem it owns and the team it sits in, then list the titles that usually go with it.

How to build an ICP

  1. Pull your best customers. Take the last ten to twenty deals that closed fast and stayed, and leave out the ones you discounted to win.
  2. Find what they share. Industry, size and region first, then the tools they ran and what changed at each before they bought.
  3. Write it in two sentences. If you need three different pitches, you have three ICPs, each with its own list.
  4. Add the exclusions. Customers, open deals and opt-outs come off before the first search.
  5. Check it against replies. After the first campaign, compare who answered with who you aimed at, and narrow the profile where it missed.

In GetSales you describe who you sell to, and an AI search turns your words into one search filter before the first page is read. Turn on Check on save and say who passes. AI checks every record against it before it is saved.

Sources

  1. Office of Management and Budget, North American Industry Classification System: Revision for 2022, Federal Register, 21 December 2021. Read 28 October 2026.

Last updated: October 2026

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